Sidney Sussex College : Book of Hours (Use of Sarum) [Unfinished]

Sidney Sussex College

Made somewhere in England during the 15th century, this manuscript is one of a handful of examples of Books of Hours included in the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries project on account of the addition of medical recipes to blank spaces. These additions - and the private, devotional manuscript context in which they are found - illustrate the penetration of medical knowledge and presumably practice into the late medieval household. Though it lacks full-page devotional miniatures of the sort seen in <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-II-00006-00002/1'>Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.6.2</a> or <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FITZWILLIAM-MUSEUM-MCCLEAN-00089/1'>Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 89</a>, or the extensive series of half-page miniatures, architectual frames and heraldic devices of <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FITZWILLIAM-00038-01950/1'>Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 38-1950</a>, and though it appears to have been left unfinished, nevertheless this manuscript's standard of production is notably high. The text is written in a large module, textura quadrata script: the letters are formed of a series of separate strokes of the pen, with the top and bottom of each minim finished with a diamond-shaped serif, and in addition they are often furnished with delicate, curling otiose strokes. Since the appearance of textura scripts and their variants in the 13th and 14th centuries, this had always been among the most technically challenging for scribes to execute. As the use of cursive or semi-cursive book hands spread in the late medieval period, in response to rising literacy and a growing demand for copies of books that were themselves often of increasing length, so this formal or 'set' style of handwriting became less commonly used. Furthermore, as Malcolm Parkes observed, by the end of the 14th century, 'there is evidence to suggest that good Textura was getting beyond the competence of some professional scribes', with its use being increasingly confined to 'display' purposes such as headings and colophons. Large coloured initials on a gold background ornament the beginning of key sections of the text, accompanied by full or three-sided borders containing stylised foliage and flowers. The presence of aroid flowers, the enclosure of border decoration within ruled boundaries (to make a 'bar' border), and the inclusion therein of some naturalistic or semi-naturalistic flowers and leaves (but not in every instance), all point to production in the middle or probably third quarter of the 15th century. Whoever commissioned the book's production must therefore have been of some means. The reasons for the book's apparent incompleteness are unknown; perhaps its patron died prematurely. We would ordinarily expect to find a calendar at the beginning (it is possible that this was made but later lost), as well as other sections such as the Office of the Dead and the Commendationes animarum. Nothing is known of the medieval owners of the book beyond what is provided by an incomplete note about the birth of a 'Robert Mathew' on 3rd December in an unspecified year: presumably one of his parents or relatives was the book's owner at that time (for the use of a Book of Hours for similar familial record-keeping, see CUL, MS Ii.6.2 and Fitzwilliam, MS McClean 89). Subsequently, two owners or users of the book added recipes to blank spaces on the endleaves. The first added two cures 'for dissese in wommanis brestis' to f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>iii recto</a>; the second added a third to this, as well as a formula for rat poison, both of which they then copied onto f. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(171);return false;'>80r</a> underneath the birth-date note. The first remedy instructs the reader to take half a pint of 'good stale ale', into which they mix a few powdered grains and (or amounting to?) a spoonful of clean wheat flour, and warm the concoction before drinking it in the evening and morning. The second, herbal recipe uses a handful of germander and sage, boiled in olive oil or May-butter, which are then lain 'warme to the sore brest upon a lynen cloth'. The third uses groundswell, mashed and wrung out in order to procure the juice for an unstated purpose; 'sche schall be esyd (i.e. eased) there of', it concludes. Recipes for rat poison, or charms to disperse vermin, are common occurrences - as, one presumes, were their intended targets. This one recommends mixing arsenic, realgar (a sulphide of arsenic), diced bacon and a little oatmeal, placed upon a tile-stone. That would certainly be effective. Dr James Freeman Medieval Manuscripts Specialist Cambridge University Library